Farai Chideya has combined media, technology, and
diversity during her 20-year career as an award-winning author
and journalist. Via the Pop and Politics brand, Chideya is
currently producing multimedia political specials via broadcast
radio, web-video and social media with partners including WNYC
and American Public Media. The team behind "Pop and Politics
with Farai Chideya" is road-tripping through America to
interview people about economic anxiety and national identity
crises concerning religion, immigration, and race. This project
is a new twist on a continuing passion to combine online and
traditional media. Chideya originally launched
PopandPolitics.com as a blog in 1995.

Chideya is currently a "Leader in Residence" at the Colin Powell
School for Policy Studies, where she is focusing on media
training the next generation of public policy leaders. She
speaks frequently to business, college, civic, and youth
audiences, and also provides media training services to other
journalists and business and civic leaders. She was born and
raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated from Harvard
University Magna Cume Laude in 1990.

From 2006 to early 2009, Chideya hosted NPR’s News and Notes.
She has been a reporter for ABC News, a political analyst for
CNN, a host for the Oxygen Network, and continues to appear on
television as a cultural commentator. She and the teams she has
worked with have won awards including a National
EducationReporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and a special
award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association
for coverage of AIDS.

Chideya has written three nonfiction books: Trust: Reaching the
100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future; and Don’t
Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African
Americans. Her novel Kiss the Sky (Atria Books) was released in
hardcover May 2009 and paperback May 2010. All of the books have
been taught at the college level in subjects from ethnic studies
to pop culture. All are taught on college campuses across the
country in subjects from ethnic studies to pop culture.

She was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland
and graduated with a B.A. from Harvard University magna cum
laude in 1990.

Farai is thrilled about the publication of her first novel in
May 2009 by Atria Books. It's called Kiss the Sky, and Essence
Magazine has named it its book club pick for the month of May.

Kiss The Sky tracks the life of Sophie 'Sky' Lee, a
thirtysomething black rock musician making a comeback in New
York City in 2000. There are a few hitches to her plans: Sky's
guitarist is her mercurial, drug-abusing ex-husband; her manager
is also her boyfriend; and Sky herself is frightened of the cost
she'll pay to reach the pinnacle of fame. Add to that her
struggles with religion, her family, and her meddling
girlfriends and you have a book which blends substantial themes
of love, faith, and longing with contemporary pop culture. Kiss
the Sky also has a catalogue of music references on par with
books like High Fidelity

In these provocative pieces, Farai Chideya looks at and beyond the daily
political struggles to the heart of a nation at war with itself. The 2000
election highlighted the rift between liberal/conservative and Red State/Blue
State. But that superficial crack, says Chideya, indicates much more serious,
indeed foundational, damage. The United States, she argues, lacks the moral,
legal, and psychological framework for debating complex issues in a pluralistic
society, relying instead on an outdated dichotomy model that says each issue has
two opposing sides instead of many interested parties. Covering recent and
current campaigns and controversies, Chideya skips the easy answers, showing how
black-and-white thinking (a key element of the Bush administration) stifles our
moral and political responses. Topics include the War on Drugs, prisons, the
Bush tax cuts, and, on a hopeful note, the silver lining of the 2000
presidential election.

Who are the 100 million Americans'half of the electorate'who
are unlikely to vote in 2004? Political analyst Farai Chideya looks beyond
day-to-day political struggles to the heart of a nation at war with itself. The
contentious 2000 election was decided by only 537 votes, while millions of
Americans stayed away from the polls. It highlighted the rift between
liberal/conservative and " Red State "/ " Blue State ." But that already
profound divide is evidence of a much more serious, indeed foundational, damage
in our society. The United States , Chideya argues, lacks the moral, legal, and
psychological framework for debating complex issues in a pluralistic society.
Instead we rely on an outdated idea of dichotomy, that each issue has two
opposing sides instead of many interested parties. And in so doing, we have
lost, in effect disenfranchised, half the country.

Chideya's title essay compliments many other ones written in
the course of covering campaigns and controversies. She skips the easy answer,
showing how black/white thinking (a key element of the Bush Adminstration)
restricts our moral and political responses. A real democracy will allow us to
acknowledge the complexity of our own lives, as well as our political interests.
As we do that, we will be able to craft a working vision of government and civic
life.

Since the Civil Rights movement, most Americans have thought of race as a
black and white issue. That won't be the case for long. By the year 2050, there
will be more nonwhite than white Americans, and most of the nonwhite population
will be Asian and Latino, not black. Increasingly, America is becoming a
multiracial society. Americans in their teens and twenties are at the forefront
of this cultural revolution. In The Color of Our Future, young journalist Farai
Chideya explores how members of the next generation deal with race in their own
lives and how the decisions they make determine America's future.

Chideya's stereotype-shattering 1995 book, Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting
Cultural Misinformation About African-Americans (Plume Penguin), is now in its
eighth printing. Using statistics, she systematically undercuts the argument
that African-Americans are at the root of problems like crime, welfare and
drugs.